


They Look so Pretty When They Bleed

by Widowfics



Series: Varian and Whumptober 2020 [9]
Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Blood Loss, Cass is confused, Hurt Varian (Disney), I tried my best, I'm just a freshman don't judge, Impaled, It's kinda cringey, Varian's not giving up, Whump, Whumptober 2020, Zhan Tiri is a jerk, but oh well, let's see how that works out..., like actually this time, no Ruddiger:(, no.10, red rocks are back, set right after Cassandra's Revenge, teehee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26929213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Widowfics/pseuds/Widowfics
Summary: “ENOUGH!”She falls to her knees as red rocks rapidly shoot from all around her. As she tries to catch her breath, she realizes the girl is gone again, and Varian has stopped talking. In fact, she can’t hear him anymore. What-“C-Cassie?”orWhat if Varian had stayed after Cassandra's Revenge?
Relationships: Cassandra & Varian (Disney: Tangled), Cassandra & Zhan Tiri
Series: Varian and Whumptober 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940524
Comments: 20
Kudos: 140
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	They Look so Pretty When They Bleed

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! So this fic is actually probably one of the first TTS fics I ever wrote. It's been under a LOT of editing since then...yeah, it's definitely not perfect. Either way, I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> PROMPTS I USED TODAY: blood loss

“The clash - what?” Cassandra tries to reason out loud. “You - you used me?”

The ghost girl - well, now just girl - looks unconcerned at Cassandra’s confusion.

“No, I didn’t use you. I simply want to help you achieve your goal. The only way to do that is by becoming tangible, which the sundrop and moonstone’s meeting did.”

“I almost died! Was that necessary for my _goal_?!” Cass exclaims.

The girl looks annoyed as she turns to face the holder of the moonstone.

“Don’t be so dramatic, you’re perfectly fine. Besides, we have more important things to worry about.”

“More important thi- Rapunzel has a fourth incantation! That can destroy the rocks! You didn’t think that was important for me to know before?”

“Oh please, I-” the girl stops abruptly, peering straight past Cassandra.

“What?” Cass says, looking in the same direction. “What is it?”

“Somebody’s here.”

With only that, the girl disappears.

Cassandra ignores her last sentence, angry at her sudden departure.

“Seriously? You’re just gonna leave me here?” 

She kicks a rock and lets out a frustrated scream, looking at the spot the girl was before.

“Somebody’s here, yeah right,” she mutters.

The girl she had considered a mentor had used her. Now she’s just trying to avoid explaining. Cassandra is beginning to question her motives. This doesn’t mean she’s giving up her destiny, but maybe she didn’t need a certain someone. Maybe-

“Cass?”

Cassandra instinctively calls black rocks to surround her at the sudden voice. The girl hadn’t been lying. There’s someone here.

The question is, who?

~

Varian waves a little as the princess and her friends ride away slowly. He had convinced them to leave him a little ways from the tower, as his home is in the other direction and he has to pick up some materials.

At least, that’s what he had told them.

The truth is, he hasn’t given up. Not yet.

As soon as Rapunzel’s bright hair is out of sight, Varian turns around and begins to run back where he came from. He bursts through the vines and rushes towards the tower, desperately hoping Cassandra hasn’t left.

When there’s no sign of her outside, he finds the crack in the wall and enters. After climbing many flights of stairs, he manages to make it to the top. Before emerging in what used to be the throne room, though, he stops. He hears Cass’s voice, but then there’s another voice. A girl’s voice. She has a distinct accent, almost...familiar. But how?

Varian stops thinking about it when he hears the girl again.

“Somebody’s here.”

Varian looks at himself to make sure his entire body is out of view. He hears Cass speak again.

“Seriously? You’re just gonna leave me here?”

He hears a frustrated scream and the sound of a pebble skid and then, “Somebody’s here, yeah right.”

Varian briefly debates announcing his presence (how would she react? She hadn’t been gentle the last time, if the bruises and sores all over his body are any indicators) before throwing all rational thinking out the window. He steps outside.

“Cass?”

Black rocks erupt from the ground immediately, surrounding her and obscuring her from Varian’s sight.

“Cass?” he repeats. “Cass please, it’s me.”

“Stay away from me!”

“Cass, I only want to help. Please, you have to listen to me!”

There’s a short pause.   
“Varian?” she finally says, almost...vulnerably. It doesn’t last long.

“No! No, you can’t be here. You have to leave.”

Varian sighs. “Stop, Cass. Just, don’t. Don’t shut me out. Don’t be so rash. Just think about what you’re doing to your friends! Please, don’t make that mistake.”

Varian comes closer to the wall of rocks, trying to see if he can get through. He hears Cass laugh, bitterly and nervously.

“Oh, I did think. I thought plenty. And guess what? You’re not my friends, none of you are!”

Varian shakes his head as he finds an opening and squeezes between two rocks.

“No, I don’t believe that. And I don’t believe that you believe that. You know, deep down, that we care about you-”

“Varian, the last time we saw each other, you tried to kill me with a robot,” she immediately retorts. Varian winces at the reminder, realizing they never got a chance to talk about what he had done over a year ago. But before he can say anything, she continues.

“Lance is too stupid to know what to think, Eugene has never liked me, and Rapunzel…”

“Rapunzel _loves_ you, Cassandra,” Varian finishes for her.

“Loved me,” she quickly corrects, and Varian slips under another rock. “I have no doubt Rapunzel used to love me. But not anymore.” Through an opening, he sees her shrug. “She can’t. And you know why? Because I _hate_ her. And I will destroy her.”`

Varian is mildly shocked by her words, but not for long when he remembers these exact same thoughts and feelings from himself not too long ago.

“Look, I know what it’s like to hate someone, to want revenge on them. I know what it’s like to want revenge on _her_ ! And then you don’t get it, a-and you think you’d feel even more mad but...you don’t. It’s the guilt, Cass. The guilt, it takes over you and it drives you insane! It makes you feel like, like there’s nothing you could ever do to make them forgive you and to feel whole again.”   
Cassandra doesn’t answer and Varian goes on. 

“But it’s not true, Cass. We want you back _so bad_ , we-”

“No,” she interrupts. “No, you don’t. And you don’t know what I feel, because guilt isn’t part of it. Guilt is for _children_ , for the stupid, and the _weak_. That’s not me. For once, nobody will look down on me. I am more powerful than anyone in the seven kingdoms.”

Varian stops in his tracks. Stupid? Weak? Really?

“Ok, _Cassandra_. What exactly do you think is going to happen? What are you going to do with all this newfound power? Destroy Rapunzel?”

Cass answers immediately. “Yes.”

“Ok, and when that doesn’t work? I mean, you already saw what she can do, so what’s your next move? Destroy Corona?”

“If it comes to it-”

“So you’re going to kill all of us. Me, my father, all the little boys and girls in the villages and the city? Is that what you are now?”

“Yes- no, wait, how are you coming closer?”

Varian ignores her as he dodges another rock sprouting from the ground.

“And then what? You celebrate your success? With who? Who’s going to be there for you if you _murder_ everyone?”

Varian stops when he hears another voice.

“You can’t let this child get to you, Cassandra. You can’t allow a mere _boy_ to interfere with your plans, with your _power_.”

Varian suddenly recognizes the voice. 

“The girl from the dream,” he mumbles. “That’s what this is. Cass, she’s manipulating you! She’s using you, this isn’t what you want-”

“Stop Varian! I know exactly what I want!”

Varian sees a glimpse of red rocks through a gap in the wall. Cassandra notices it too. 

“You can’t let him cause you such emotion,” the girl who had just reappeared seconds earlier tells her.

“Cass, fight this! Fight her!”

Cass breathes heavily as she tries to stand her ground.

“N-no, I won’t - I -”

“Cassandra, do not let him tell you what to do!”

“Don’t let _her_ tell you what to do. Cass-”

“ENOUGH!”

She falls to her knees as red rocks rapidly shoot from all around her. As she tries to catch her breath, she realizes the girl is gone again, and Varian has stopped talking. In fact, she can’t hear him anymore. What-

“C-Cassie?”

Cass whips her head towards the small voice, and notices two things right away.

Varian has somehow managed to slip past all the rocks, and is only a few feet from her.

And

A bright red rock juts through his stomach, causing even brighter red blood to spread around it.

She screams into the hand clapped over her mouth. 

Even through the voice yelling at her to move, warning her that every second she wastes is _killing_ the boy in front of her, she can’t move. She’s frozen to this spot, frozen in time, frozen in memories.

Had she really thought him the threat not too long ago? That _he_ would be the one to lose control and kill _her_?

It seemed fate had the cruelest ways of turning the tables.

“Varian…” she chokes on a sob.

“What have I done?”

Somehow, through adrenaline and sheer willpower, she forces herself to go to him and makes the rock recede back into the ground, grimacing at the sound of mineral exiting flesh. She allows him to fall into her lap, holding his newly bloodied body close.

“Why did you do it? Why did you come back?” she asks, tears running down her face now. “I didn’t mean- I’m so sorry Varian, I didn’t mean for it to go this far…”

He stays silent, and she makes her eyes meet his. His whole body is trembling, and his breathing is becoming shallow and quick. Cass can feel his blood seeping into her armor and more tears come.

Varian catches her reaction and dares to look down at his wound for the first time. He can’t stop the strangled whimper that escapes him at the sight of all that _blood_. Another follows when a stream of red flows from his now parted lips.

The sound pierces Cass’s heart, and her face pales. Blood, the kid hates it. She _knows_ this, knows that he practically passes out at the sight of it. Is this how he’ll go? Death by bleeding out (the fatal wound from her own power?)

No, no, she can’t think like this. He still has time, she can still fix this. Even if everything else falls apart she has to do this one thing.

“You gotta stay with me, Varian,” she says, her logical side kicking in. Every life saving technique and battle injury lesson she knows by heart from her time as a guard is at the front of her mind. She needs something to stop the bleeding, but all that’s around is her rocks…

She adjusts her grip on him and notices something. He’s still wearing his backpack, which she knows is full of supplies from when she looked through it before. 

Gently lifting him up, she slides it off of his back. Only a weak groan protests and she instinctively shushes him. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers again, digging through his bag frantically. She grabs one of his pink balls, which she knows will turn into goo on contact. 

“I don’t think any organs were hit,” she explains shakily, but the way he coughs up even more blood causes some doubt. “This can stop the bleeding.”

She squeezes the ball between her hands, making sure to steer clear of the goo that covers the kid’s stomach.

After a few seconds, he stops coughing, and she thinks his breathing sounds less strained.

“Ok, ok, it looks like it’s working,” she breathes as she runs a hand through her hair, tears dripping off her chin.

How could she have done this? Maybe everyone else was right. Maybe she really couldn’t be trusted with such power. She shivers at the sight of all the blood and the sound of wheezing. She’s not squeamish, not in the least, but this is _Varian_ . And no matter what they had done to each other, or what side of the law they stood on, she doesn’t think she had ever wanted to _hurt_ the kid.

Right?

“Cass…”

Cass is pulled from her thoughts at the sound of his voice.

“I know, I know, I’m trying to think. I’m try-”

“Cass,” Varian interrupts weakly. His big blue eyes lock with hers. 

“Rapunzel…”

“What?” Why is he talking about _her_ ? “Varian, Varian it’s me. Not - not Rapunzel.” 

Varian slowly lifts his arm, touching her hair with his bloodied glove. She tenses.

“Rapunzel…” he repeats, squeezing his eyes shut at the pain the motion has surely caused him.

“No, why do you…” suddenly, it hits her. “Rapunzel’s hair!”

Varian nods slightly and lets his hand drop.

“But,” she protests, “her hair doesn’t heal anymore, remember?”

Varian doesn’t answer, his eyes staying closed. _He’s fading_ , Cass thinks. The goo can only be doing so much.

In this moment, she knows, despite everything she’s felt and done towards Rapunzel, that she has to try. She _has_ too, or Varian will be dead.

And she'll be the one who killed him.

**Author's Note:**

> ok so I just realized this is a cliffhanger...sorry 😅 I don't plan on finishing it, but who knows, maybe that will change? thx for reading anyway:)


End file.
